Arrokoth

Graphical adventure game creation system!

Created with SBCL Common Lisp and McCLIM.

You can follow code development at my gitlab.

I often talk about it on fediverse, and the Lispy Gopher Climate Show by Screwtape.

Status

Listing features that work, SOON, MID, LATER, or FINALLY for TODO items.

• Text-based command UI.
• Edit grids with text, color, and tiles. Design your own world however you like! Text-based or graphics.
  • For example, make a labyrinth of blocking tiles with text messages in the open path. Branch when there's a decision to make. Literally a pick-a-path walking simulator!
  • Or make a fully graphical adventure with only minimal dialog, action-adventure style.
  • Or, use scripting to write any kind of game that displays a grid or text.
• Tile graphics. Ships with Kenney's 1-bit tiles but any set at 32x32px fully split tiles are supported. Modify img/arrokoth-tilemap.txt to add them, or declare them in scripting.
• (SOON) Hotkeys, menus, mouse interface. Make building & moving much faster.
• (SOON) Save/load world files. Every world is saved as a pair of your avatar info, and the world, at a given time.
  • So you can share just the world, and players can start fresh.
• (MID) Scripting, using a safe LISP-like mini-language.
• (MID) Scripted events, responding to actions, items used, or Say text.
• (MID) Inventory items as flags or counters, not piles of stuff on the ground; like most JRPGs, or adventure games. Very minimal inventory management.
• (LATER) NPCs (Non-Player Characters).
• (LATER) Combat? That might be up to the script. Say fight, the script rolls some dice and resolves it.
  • Or I can develop a turn-based combat screen.
• (LATER) Support proper single-image tilemaps, other tile sizes.
• (LATER) Sprite graphics and animation.
• (FINALLY) Packaged binary for… probably Mac, maybe Windows. Linux can work from source.

Notes

Originally called "mcclim-console" as I learned what could be done with CLIM.

Named for 486958 Arrokoth, formerly known as Ultima Thule.